


Brown eyes are underrated

by jspringsteen



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 12:06:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8055682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jspringsteen/pseuds/jspringsteen
Summary: With his runaway mouth, Ray can fool a lot of Marines. But not Brad. Because Brad knows his eyes.





	Brown eyes are underrated

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tournesol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tournesol/gifts).



How many pairs of eyes does the average person look into during a lifetime?

Hundreds?

Thousands?

A couple years rolling around the Middle East with the same platoon will notch a couple hundred off of that number, but still.

How many of those looks are fleeting?

Most of them, of course. For example, the ones he exchanges with the mess officer, out of politeness. But sometimes he thinks he can detect guilt in the slightest crinkle between his eyebrows. After all, it's not his fault that their chow often meets the bare standards of nutrition.

And how many of them are enough to have a profound effect on him?

He remembers how he had to force himself to hold Godfather's gaze while the colonel told him that command thought First Recon was slaying dragons. He wasn't afraid, or intimidated--but he unexpectedly felt like a young boy again, surprised that Ferrando even knew his name, much less singled him out and treated him to a benign smile and some good (if pointless) advice: to stay frosty. Yet there was a smugness about it too, and it was knowing that this one man had the power to level entire villages and send Brad, or Bravo, or even the entire First Recon to their deaths if he thought the situation asked for it that made Brad mine his heart for a lump of steely resolve. So he set his jaw and held his gaze. He read the amusement and respect that Ferrando held for him in his blue eyes.

What a difference it made what sort of brain--no, what sort of soul it was that peeked out from behind these windows. Brad prides himself on being able to read eyes and make up his mind about a person instantaneously. It's one of his Iceman powers, as Poke says. Brad knows that eye colour doesn't matter--anger can, like a drop of ink, turn both blue and brown into black, and happiness can make any eye luminous.  
  
And how many of them make him backtrack and come back for more?

The ones he exchanges with Nate. Where his annoyance with almost everyone else takes a verbal form, to Nate, he speaks with his eyes. They fight with their eyes, because they don't want to upset the men. They lock in their trust of the other in a gaze. Nate is a good person, and his eyes are a dead giveaway.

Brad does have a fondness for blue eyes. In fact, though he knows many people with brown eyes he loves and respects, he's never fallen for a pair of brown eyes. They've never made him weak at the knees. They've never looked at him across a table in a restaurant filled with warmth or sensuality. They've never been the first thing he saw when he woke up in the morning.

That is, of course, until he met Ray Person.

No, no sensual looks across the dinner table, only a gaunt, hungry gaze quickly tossed back and forth as Ray stuffed his mouth (or, more often than not, the *general area* around it), grateful for every morsel of chow they got out in the desert. Not hazelnut, soft, heavy-lidded with sleep, but coal-black, wide and red-rimmed at 4 AM when told they were Oscar Mike. As with Trombley, as with Hasser, as with Gabe and Poke and even Reporter (though he's easy, eyes wide with terror or disbelief pretty much 24/7), Brad learns Ray's moods by the speed with which he blinks, the changing colour of his irises, the changing colour of the circles underneath them. The number of castaway grains of desert sand in his eyelashes, for example, tells him Ray has braved the shamal to urinate while he and the others were sleeping soundly.

The first time he tells Ray about getting dumped, the mocking look drains from his eyes. No matter what hideous insults they barter and trade every day, what's left over is the look that tells Brad Ray has his back--that he won't take advantage of a shitty situation. That's when Brad knows he can trust Ray with his life.

Ray's eyes are usually on whoever Brad is talking to, always on his six. They have lost their glimmer, Brad notices, after they have taken Baghdad, like marbles dulled by playground grit and too many grubby hands. The everyday human tragedies, both small and big, have worn away at him; they've made their way through his ridiculous Elvis-sunglasses and night goggles after all.  
  
With his runaway mouth, Ray can fool a lot of Marines. But not Brad. Because Brad knows his eyes.

When Ray storms away from the football game, Brad runs after him, alarmed by the rage and the raw honesty of the look in his eyes. And sure enough, when he has caught up to Ray and touches his shoulder, Ray turns around and stares at him, rough patches of red on his cheeks from furiously wiping at them with his coarse palms, and his eyes, his dark eyes blazing as if a thunderstorm has raged through them and left a stark, blackened landscape behind. But puffy eyelids betray him and soon enough the blackness is washed away, leaving a blurry impression of water rushing over a muddy river bottom.

"God damn it, Brad," is all Ray can manage before Brad crushes him against his chest. He feels Ray inhale and exhale with great shuddery breaths, and feels the warm tears leaking onto his shirt.  
  
It's not always easy being the Iceman. It's often enough that Brad knows, despite his best efforts, that his eyes mirror his helplessness, his frustration, his anger at the world. Often he wishes for a mask that, like his helmet, he can wear to remain professional. But now, as Ray pulls back and looks at him, saying nothing, Brad hopes that Ray can read his eyes like he can his. The vulnerable look in Ray's eyes tells him it is a good thing that there are soft things in this hard world, this world of sand and bombs they live in where human lives are torn apart and tossed away as carelessly as MRE wrappers. Brown eyes, Brad decides, are underrated.


End file.
